Per our discussion after Session #6, Mu Cephei rates two different Culture/Tech aspects. The outer system is a unique blend of Terran and Lagosian emphasizing individuality, with Terran as the dominant language, not quite to the point of exclusion. Lagos Prime is a reactionary culture which emphasizes maintaining bonds to the past, to an almost religious extent, with Lagosian as the dominant language, again not quite to the point of exclusion.

A red supergiant.

Mu Cephei is a desolate system. It has eight planets and an asteroid belt, but seven of them are gas giants with nothing but asteroids for moons and the eighth has had its atmosphere blasted away by the expanding sun. Huge underground cities house the surviving natives (called 'warrens' by most of the human visitors). These overcrowded cities are being slowly evacuated; shielded hangars launch robotic rockets into the sky every night, and the passenger modules are loaded onto enormous freight carriers, protected from and propelled by the deadly solar wind with massive magnetic sails. These carriers take the passenger modules out to the outer system, where the L4 and L5 points of one of the gas giants have been turned into a series of Bernal Spheres.

The natives are a race of bunny-like humanoids. Older than humanity but without the same driving urges, the Lagos are quite content to live in situations that would drive humans batty. Their world housed teeming billions until their sun began to expand into a red supergiant. The Lagos dug their cities deeper and began to push further out into the system, but it was to little avail, and almost all of those billions died.

Enter the humans.

Eighty years ago, a human scout ship entered the system. Though the inhabitants didn't notice it at first, it definitely noticed them. Within months, a diplomatic ship had arrived in the system and a treaty was signed - to wit, the Lagos would submit to nominal Terran Confederacy authority and the Confederacy would, in turn, build a shipyard in the system. Mu Cephei's plentiful asteroids are perfect for space-based construction, and the large numbers of gas giants are perfect for fueling.

Almost a century has passed. The planet still hasn't been fully evacuated; almost a billion survivors are all but trapped under the surface of their dead world, and while more space habitats are under construction, they haven't been completed, won't be ready for another decade, and still won't fit everyone. As it stands, the stations are getting a bit more crowded every day, and many of the Lagos still on Lago Prime are losing hope for escape.

The biggest project to try and fix this is the Cylinder Factory. A mammoth undertaking beyond anything ever attempted by Lagos (perhaps even Humans), the Cylinder Factory will be able to move along the length of an Island Three habitat and leave station behind. A gigantic framework, the factory will include all the smelters needed to process asteroids into glass and metal and will be able to produce a pair of cylinders in a bare handful of years. It will ensure the survival of the Lago Race and is naturally the subject of massive opposition - the asteroid throwers feeding the factory will be deadly weapons of mass destruction, and the construction of the device is taking the majority of the gross domestic product of the system.

Human presence is primarily at the shipyard, though there are humans on a number of stations. Lago attitude towards Human is generally positive, and the reverse is true - the differences between the species are small enough that it's easy to jump the gap. Lago-human romance is considered 'odd' but not unknown; mainstream Lagos think it's weird but a very effective means of birth control, something that they have to worry about these days.

Locations

Lago Prime - a barren world covered with the radiation-blasted, scorched ruins of the proud Lago people. Many of the ancient cities cover the modern, buried cities which house the surviving population, the Warrens. Almost a billion Lagos are crowded into space which was really meant to hold a hundred million or so. This unwarranted crowding has revealed unknown facets in Lago psychology - crime is rising and the darkest depths of the Warrens are places where no sane being would willingly tread without Marine backup.

Great Spire - the first O'Neill Cylinder constructed in the Mu Cephei system. The Great Spire has yet to reach its maximum population capacity, but it's getting there quickly: current population 19 million, nominal maximum 20, and a theoretical peak before the life support goes haywire of 25.

Commodore Perry Naval Shipyards - the only Confederation Military Shipyard in Mu Cephei and home to the largest concentration of humans in the system. The shipyards are built out from an asteroid, with six 1.4km habitation rings. The yard control facility uses artificial gravity. Four of the rings are residential, one is commercial, and the remainder is purely military housing; this and the yard itself are off-limits to those Lagos who haven't enlisted in the Confederation Navy or Space Forces. In theory, there are about ten thousand Navy types here and about a thousand Space Forces on rotation; in practice they don't rotate so much since the cluster was cut off from the Confederation. Additionally, there are about fifteen thousand civilian contractors; a city has grown up supporting the troops with a human population of about twenty thousand and a Lagos population of about forty thousand.

Story Hooks

The Cylinder Factory is one of the most titanic construction projects in history. What will the problems be from that?

It will take decades AT BEST to finish building space stations for the Lagos to evacuate the planet. Wouldn't it be easier to leave the system?

Social pressure between station Lagos and planet Lagos - the slum-dwellers and those who live in Crystal Palaces.

Stunts: Jammers & counterjammers (Signals 1->2), Remote control over platoon's self-repair (Command 3->4), Special forces (not automatically spotted when sharing a zone with an enemy), Logistics genius (units do not have "Out of ammo")